In 2008 I decided I wanted to start a CSA. To get an idea of what I could raise veggie-wise I grew a giant two acre garden and sold the produce at a local farmers market. That year I planted tomatoes exactly the same way I had always planted tomatoes…out in the garden with everything else. My tomatoes that year did pretty well and I got lots of nice compliments on them.
In 2009 I launched the CSA and once again planted tomatoes out in the garden. That year the plants met with total disaster. First they wilted, then the leaves turned black, then the unripe tomatoes turned black and the whole mess died. I felt terrible. Here I was with a brand new CSA and whole slew of rotten tomatoes. And everyone knows that tomatoes are one of the crown jewels of a CSA box.
As soon as I noticed a problem I frantically started doing research on what could’ve caused the collapse. I learned that tomato blight was the culprit. It had blown into my county and obliterated many a tomato crop. The blight is a type of fungus that comes in, attacks plants, spreads, kills and generally decimates.
After that whole debacle, I decided to do everything in my power to not get the blight again. I toured some other local CSA farms and found that it was popular to plant most tomatoes in a hoophouse. A hoophouse is an unheated greenhouse made of big hoops, hence the name. Plants are grown directly in the ground inside the structure which is covered in a giant sheet of heavy duty plastic. The shelter a hoophouse provides keeps the tomato plants safe from wind and rain which are the two main vehicles for blight.
When I learned this I was kinda irritated that tomatoes needed so much fussing with. Here was a vegetable that in most years grows profussly and happily right out in the field with really very little care. Some years the plants will die of blight but most other years they will be fine. Anyway, I decided to not take the chance and put up one of these nifty hoophouses.
Like most things, this endeavor turned out to be easier said than done. The construction took me three solid weeks and I had lots of help from my husband, dad, father-in-law and uncle in addition to a whole bunch of folks that came to help put up the plastic. I’d probably still be working on it if I hadn’t had any help. Here are the steps in case you want to share in my trials and tribulations. Or if you are planning on building one yourself, these steps may give you some insight on what to expect.
1. Figure out where you want to put a hoophouse
2. Learn that you can’t just toss one up anywhere, the ground has to be flat or made to be flat, realize you have no interest in hiring a backhoe
3. Select a new site that’s naturally flat
4. Figure out how big of a structure you can fit on your designated site
5. Select a hoophouse that has a style you like and a size that suits your site
6. Agonize over it a bit, finally realize that you have to shit or get off the pot and pick one already
7. Order the hoophouse
8. Tell the company you’ll come out to the wharehouse and pick it up (it’s cheaper that way)
9. Move any fences that are currently on the site
10. Cut down any brush
11. Burn off all the grass and tall weeds
12. Disk
13. Dig
14. Repeat steps 12 and 13 until the soil is worked up good
15. Drag
16. Eagerly await the arrival of your hoophouse
17. Receive a call from a warehouse employee telling you that your hoophouse has accidentally been shipped to your house
18. Wonder how a semi truck is going to get into your yard, drop off, turn around, ect.
19. Also wonder how you will manage to get a 13 foot pallet off such a truck
20. Freak out
21. Get the bright idea to call the local feed mill and ask if they can unload the pallet with their fork lift onto a hay wagon that you will bring
22. Breathe a major sigh of relief when they say “sure!”
23. Go borrow your dad’s truck and hay wagon
24. Drive it to the feed mill
25. Unhitch it
26. Go home
27. Wait by the phone
28. Get a call from the feed mill telling you it’s in
29. Head back to the feed mill
30. Hitch up the wagon and drive the pallet carefully home
31. Marvel at the pallet which contains a 24 foot by 72 foot hoophouse all wrapped up nice
32. Fully understand the concept of ‘some assembly required’
33. Carefully read the instructions and learn that the manufactures recommends that you hire a contractor to come out to your place and erect this thing for you
34. Congratulate yourself for being so thrifty and resourceful
35. Tear into the pallet
36. Find pipes, rolls of plastic sheeting and bags and bags of important looking hardware
37. Attempt to organize it
38. Give up
39. Begin surveying
40. Locate the four corners of your soon-to-be hoophouse
41. Place stakes at each corner
42. Run string around these to make a rectangle
43. Run string diagonally to get a perfect rectangle
44. Spend several hours fussing with the string and a line level
45. Finally be satisfied that you have plotted the layout of the hoophouse
46. Using your string as a guide, start pounding in pipe stakes with a sledge hammer
47. Pound in quite a few of them
48. Learn you have been pounding the stakes in exactly two inches too far out
49. Swear
50. Pull up all the pipe stakes you have pounded in
51. Repeat steps 40 through 46 until all the hoop stakes are in
52. Start assembling hoops
53. Locate hoop pipes
54. Drill out holes
55. Screw the pipes together
56. With helpers lift the hoop and place it into a hoop stake
57. Realize it’s crooked
58. Take the hoop down
59. Take it apart
60. Rig up a flat surface using a level and some random boards
61. Repeat steps 52 through 56 until all the hoops are up
62. Find or borrow some ladders
63. Install purlins, braces, and wiggle wire tracts
64. Get really tired of standing on a ladder with your arms above your head holding a drill
65. Go buy a pile of untreated 2 X 4s
66. Screw them to your hoops as upper and lower baseboards
67. Run out of lumber
68. Go get more
69. Repeat step 66 until all the baseboards are in
70. Start constructing the endwalls
71. Dig holes for footings
72. Make cement forms
73. Go cement shopping
74. Explain to the hardware guy what you are doing
75. Follow his advice and buy 18 bags of cement
76. Mix up some cement
77. Pour it into your holes
78. Stick some ready rod in there
79. Return 12 bags of cement
80. Make heavy duty baseboard sandwiches using 2 X 4s and plywood
81. Drill holes in these to match your ready rod
82. Install the baseboards
83. Frame out the rest of the end wall
84. Carefully measure a doorframe
85. Build a door
86. Learn it is too big for your opening
87. Remake the door
88. Learn it is too small for your opening
89. Cheat by giving the door to your dad for him to figure out
90. Repeat steps 70 through 89 for the other end wall
91. Start gearing up to install the roof
92. Wonder how wiggle wire works
93. Call the company to ask
94. Become cunfused
95. Go look at someone else’s hoophouse to actually see how it works
96. Call in as many reinforcements as you can for the plastic roof stretching, bribe people as needed with beer and hotdogs (I managed to get 13 folks)
97. Curse the fact that it is windy on the day you picked to stretch plastic
98. Barge ahead anyway
99. When your crew shows up give them a lesson on how wiggle wire works
100. Explain that you will be rolling out huge sheets of plastic that will have to be wiggle wired in on all sides
101. Unroll the biggest piece of plastic you have ever seen
102. Station some helpers up on ladders armed with wiggle wire
103. Finagle the giant expanse of plastic across one of the end walls
104. Have more helpers hold the plastic tight across the end wall frame
105. Slowly and carefully apply the wiggle wire so that the plastic is nice and smooth
106. When the whole side is secured congratulate yourself and your crew for having completed one side
107. Repeat steps 101 through 106 for the other end wall
108. Get ready to do the roof
109. Unrolled an even larger hunk of plastic
110. Tie strings to it on one side
111. Tie something heavy to one side
112. Throw your weighted corner over the hoophouse
113. Station several helpers on each side
114. Use the strings to get the piece of plastic even over the top
115. Put two helpers on ladders inside the househouse
116. Give them lots of wiggle wire
117. When a gust of wind comes up, hang on for dear life
118. See the wind actually pick up some of your helpers as they try to hang on and the wind turns your untethered plastic into what amounts to a giant kite
119. Lose the plastic
120. Swear
121. Repeat steps 112 through 120… twice
122. Get the idea to temporarily secure the plastic with short lengths of wiggle wire after you throw it over and even it up
123. Start at one end and smooth and correct the plastic as you go, with enough people you can get it right
124. Cheer
125. Start a bon fire and enjoy hotdogs and beer with your crew
126. Assemble the roll up side mechanisms
127. Unroll more plastic
128. Wiggle wire it to the long sides of the hoophouse
129. Secure the bottom of the plastic to the roll up mechanism
130. Be amazed at how easy it is to roll up a side
131. Install rope hardware
132. Thread rope through
133. Cut open your doors
134. Wiggle wire the plastic to them
135. Be happy it’s finally done
136. Hang out inside the hoophouse for a bit and admire it before you rototill and plant your tomatoes
